Midday. It was quiet, innocent, and fresh in the depth of the wood, at the edge of the hollow—and the outer heat penetrated hither only by an infinite coiling as of a scaly serpent impotent at last and deprived of its poison.

Trirodov had found this place for himself and Elisaveta. More than once they came here together—to read, to talk, and to sit a while at the moss-covered stone, out of which, like a strange corporeal ghost, grew up all awry a slender quaking ash. Elisaveta, dressed in her simple short skirt, her long sunburnt arms and part of her legs showing, seemed so tall, so erect, and so graceful at this moss-covered stone.

Elisaveta was reading aloud—poems! How golden her voice sounded with its seductive, sun-like sonorousness! Trirodov listened with a slightly ironical smile to these familiar, infinitely deep and lovely words, so seemingly meaningless in life. When she finished Trirodov said:

“A man’s whole life is barely enough to think out a single idea properly.”

“You mean to say that each should choose for himself but a single idea.”

“Yes. If people could but grasp this fact human knowledge would take an unprecedented step forward. But we are afraid to venture.”

And coarse life already hovered near them behind their backs, and was about to intrude upon them. Elisaveta gave a sudden faint outcry at the unexpectedness of an unseemly apparition. A dirty, rough-looking man, all in tatters, was almost upon them; he had approached them upon the mossy ground as softly as a wood fairy. He stretched out a dirty, horny hand, and asked, not at all in a begging voice:

“Give a hungry man something to buy bread with.”

Trirodov frowned in annoyance, and without looking at the beggar took a silver coin out of the pocket of his waistcoat. He always kept a trifle about him to provide for unexpected meetings. The ragged one smiled, turned the coin, threw it upward, caught it, and hid it adroitly in his pocket.

“I thank your illustrious Honour most humbly,” he said. “May God give you good health, a rich wife, and assured success. Only I want to say something to you.”

He grew silent, and assumed a grave, important air. Trirodov frowned even more intensely than before, and asked stiffly:

“What is it you wish to tell me?”

The ragged one said with frank derision in his voice:

“It’s this. You were reading a book, my good people, but not the right one.”

He laughed a pathetic, insolent laugh. It was as if a timorous dog suddenly began to whine hoarsely, insolently, and cautiously.

Trirodov asked again in astonishment:

“Not the right one, why not?”

The ragged one began to speak with awkward gestures, and he gave the impression that he was able to speak well and eloquently, and that he merely assumed his stupid, unpolished manner of speaking.

“I had been listening to you a long time. I was behind the bush there. I was asleep, I must confess—then you came—chattered away, and waked me. The young lady read well. Clearly and sympathetically. One could see at once that it was from the heart. Only I don’t like the contents, and all that’s in this book.”

“Why don’t you like it?” asked Elisaveta quietly.

“In my opinion,” said the ragged one, “it isn’t your style. It doesn’t fit you somehow.”

“What sort of book ought we to read?” asked Elisaveta.

She gave a light, forced smile. The ragged one sat down on a near-by stump, and answered in no undue haste:

“I am not thinking of you alone, honourable folk, but of all those who parade in fancy gaiters and in velvet dresses, and look scornfully at our brothers.”

“What book?” again asked Elisaveta.

“It’s the gospels that you ought to read,” he replied, as he looked attentively and austerely at Elisaveta, his glance taking in her entire figure from her flushed face down to her feet.

“Why the gospels?” asked Trirodov, who suddenly grew morose. He appeared to be pondering over something, and unable to decide; his indecision seemed to torment him.

The ragged one replied slowly:

“I will tell you why; you’ll find the true facts there. We will take it easy in paradise, while the devils will be pulling the veins out of you in hell. And we shall look on coolly, and applaud gaily with our hands. It ought to prove entertaining.”

He burst out into loud, hoarse laughter—but it seemed more assumed than joyous, and rather abject and hideous. Elisaveta shivered.

“What a wicked person you are! Why do you think that?” said Elisaveta reproachfully.

The ragged one glanced at her crossly, and looked fixedly into her deep blue eyes; then he said with a broad smile:

“Why am I wicked? And are you two good? Wicked or not, the thing is to be just. But I may tell you, sir, that I like you,” he said as he turned suddenly to Trirodov.

“Thank you for your good opinion,” said Trirodov with a slightly ironical smile, “but why should you like me?”

He looked attentively at the ragged one. Then suddenly he felt depressed and apprehensive, and he lowered his eyes. The other slowly lit his foul-smelling pipe, stretched himself, and began after a brief silence:

“Other gentlemen’s mugs are mostly gay, as if they had gorged themselves on a pancake with cream, or had successfully forged their uncle’s will. But you, sir, seem to have the same lean mug always. I have been observing you some time now. It’s evident that you have something on your soul. At least a capital crime.”

Trirodov was silent. He lifted himself on his elbow and looked straight into the man’s eyes with such a fixed, strange expression in his unblinking, commanding, wilful eyes.

The ragged one grew silent, as if he had been congealed for a moment. Then, as if frightened, he suddenly shook himself. He shrank and stooped, and as he took his cap off he revealed an unkempt, tousled head of hair; he mumbled something, slipped away among the bushes, and disappeared quietly—like a fairy of the wood.

Trirodov looked gloomily after him—and was silent. Elisaveta thought that he deliberately avoided looking at her. She was intensely embarrassed, but made an effort to control herself. She laughed, and said with assumed gaiety:

“What a strange creature!”

Trirodov turned upon her his melancholy glances and said quietly:

“He talks like one who knows. He talks like one who sees. But no one can know what happened.”

Oh, if one could only know! If one could only change that which once had happened!

Trirodov recalled again during these days the dark history of Piotr Matov’s father. Trirodov had carelessly entangled himself in this affair, and now it compelled him to have dealings with the blackmailer Ostrov.

Piotr’s father, Dmitry Matov, had fallen into a trap which he had set for others. He had joined a secret revolutionary circle. There they soon discovered his relations with the police, and they decided to detect him and kill him.

One of the members of the circle, the young physician Lunitsin, took the role of betrayer upon himself. He promised to obtain for Dmitry Matov important documents involving many of the members. They made a bargain at a moderate figure. The meeting at which the documents were to be exchanged for the money was designated to take place in a small borough close to the town in which Trirodov then lived.

At the appointed hour Dmitry Matov got out of his train at a little station. It was late in the evening. Matov wore blue spectacles and a false beard, as was agreed upon. Lunitsin waited for him a few yards from the station, and led him to a very solitary spot where was situated the house hired for the purpose.

A supper had been prepared there. Matov ate heartily and drank much wine. His companion began to invent stories about certain suspicious movements he had heard of lately. Little by little Matov grew candid, and began to boast of his connexions with the police, and of the great number of people he had skilfully betrayed.

The door leading to the next room was hung with draperies. Three people were hiding in that room—Trirodov, Ostrov, and the young working man Krovlin. They were listening. Krovlin was intensely excited. He kept on repeating in indignant whispers:

“Oh, the scoundrel! The wretch!”

Ostrov and Trirodov managed to restrain him with great difficulty.

“Be silent. Let him babble out everything,” they said to him.

At last Matov’s impudent boastfulness was too much for Krovlin, who jumped out from his hiding-place, and shouted:

“So that’s how it is! You’ve betrayed our men to the police! And you have the face to confess it!”

Dmitry Matov grew green with fear. He shouted to his companion:

“Kill him! He has been listening to us! Shoot quick! He mustn’t live. He will give us both up!”

At this moment two other men appeared from the same place. Lunitsin aimed his revolver straight at Matov’s forehead, and asked:

“Who ought to be killed, traitor?”

Matov then understood that he had been caught in a trap. But he still made efforts to wriggle out of it, and called all his skill and his insolence to his assistance. They tried him for treachery. At first he defended himself. He said that he had deceived the police, and that he had entered into relations with them merely to get important information for his comrades. But his protestations soon grew weaker. Then he began to beg for mercy. He spoke of his wife and of his children.

Matov’s entreaties failed to impress any one. His judges were adamant. His fate was decided. The sentence of hanging was passed unanimously.

Matov was bound. The noose was already thrown about his neck. Then Trirodov intervened:

“What are you going to do with him? It will be difficult to take him away, and it is dangerous to leave him here.”

“Who will come here?” said Lunitsin. “At best only by chance. Let him hang here until he’s found.”

“Let us bury him here in the garden, like a dog,” suggested Krovlin.

“Give him to me,” said Trirodov. “I will dispose his body in such a way that no one will find it.”

The others assented eagerly. Ostrov said with a scornful smile:

“Will you try your chemistry on him, Giorgiy Sergeyevitch? Well, it’s all the same to us. A bad man ought to be punished—make even a skeleton of him for your use if you like.”

Trirodov drew a flagon containing a colourless liquid from his pocket.

“Now this will put him to sleep,” he said.

He injected with a small syringe several drops of the liquid under Dmitry Matov’s skin. Matov gave a feeble cry and fell heavily to the floor. In a few moments the body lay before them, blue and apparently lifeless. Lunitsin examined Matov and said:

“He’s done for.”

The men left one by one. Trirodov alone remained with Matov’s body. Trirodov took off Matov’s clothes and burned them in the stove. He made several more injections of the same colourless liquid.

The night passed slowly. Trirodov lay on the sofa without taking his clothes off. He slept badly, tormented by oppressive dreams. He awoke several times.

Dmitry Matov lay in the next room on the floor. The liquid, injected into his blood, acted strangely. The body contracted in proper proportion, and wasted very quickly. Within several hours it lost more than half of its weight, and assumed very small dimensions; it became very soft and pliant. But all its proportions were faithfully preserved.

Trirodov made up the body into a large parcel, covered it over with plaid, and bound it with straps. It resembled a pillow wrapped up in plaid. Trirodov left by the morning train for home, carrying with him Dmitry Matov’s body.

At home Trirodov put the body into a vessel containing a greenish liquid compounded by himself. Matov’s body shrunk in it even more. It had become barely more than seven inches long. But as before all its proportions remained inviolate.

Then Trirodov prepared a special plastic substance, in which he wrapped Matov’s body. He pressed it compactly into the form of a cube, and placed it on his writing-table. And thus a thing that once had been a man remained there a thing among other things.

Nevertheless Trirodov was right when he told Ostrov that Matov had not been killed. Yes, notwithstanding his strange form and his distressing immobility, Dmitry Matov was not dead. The potentiality of life slept dormant in that solid object. Trirodov thought more than once as to whether the time had not come to rehabilitate Matov and return him to the world of the living.

He had not decided upon this before. But he was confident that he would succeed in doing this without hindrance. The process of rehabilitation required a tranquil and isolated place.

In a little more than a year at the beginning of the summer Trirodov decided to begin the process of rehabilitation. He prepared a large vat over six feet in length. He filled it with a colourless liquid, and lowered into it the cube containing Matov’s body.

The slow process of rehabilitation began. Unperceived by the eye, the cube began to thaw and to swell. It needed a half-year before it would thaw out sufficiently to permit the body to peer through.